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My intern just added me on Facebook — it’s sitting in “accept” purgatory. Do I have to add him?

No, you do not have to add your intern on Facebook, unless of course you want to. Of all social media channels, Facebook stands to be one of the most personal. It has also been around the longest, so it has a deep archive of your online life: likely one that you don’t really care for your intern to peruse. So don’t feel compelled to. Instead, add them on LinkedIn. It sends a message to them that you’re absolutely supportive of forming an online rapport, but that it stays strictly professional. You can leave his friend request in Facebook purgatory and decide in a few months or next year what you want to do with it. After that time, his internship would have long since ended, so you can evaluate whether or not you want to be Facebook friends. Until then, LinkedIn is the place to connect online.

There’s a creepy-looking dude who follows me on Twitter and retweets absolutely everything I tweet. It freaks me out. Can I tell him to buzz off?

I’m sorry you’re sketched out on Twitter. I can understand how an overzealous follower might give you the heebees. Maybe it is set up through an automatic retweet bot? Cold comfort for those instantaneous 2 a.m. retweets . . .

If you want to take action, it is a cinch to block a user on Twitter (though there’s nothing preventing them to creating a new account to follow you from, bear in mind). By blocking someone, you prevent them from following you or adding your account to their lists on Twitter. You won’t see tweets from these people, even if they mention your @ handle. Here is how to do it: Click on the offender’s name and then on the little icon that looks like a gear. From there, you’ll see a drop-down menu of options, one of which will be “Block.” Le voila!

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I don’t want to come across as bitchy or too good, so whenever someone asks me for a date online, I have a hard time saying no. It’s rude not to, isn’t it?

If you say yes to every date, you’re not going to have time to do anything but date. And that’s the quickest way to suck the joy out of dating: to do it out of obligation. I’m towing well out of etiquette territory here and into the murky waters of romance, but having a hellagood handle on what makes you happy is an excellent place to start matters of the heart. If you are too focused on disappointing people, it is easy to lose sight of what you’re really looking for in a date. Moreover, if you say yes to every first date, it is going to be even harder to say no to all of those second dates (unless you plan on going to all of those for fear of disappointing someone). At the risk of sounding too reductive, online dating is a bit like shopping. A glimpse of a photo is often the only catalyst for deciding whether or not to strike up a conversation. If that makes you feel squicky, you don’t have to date online. You can meet people all kinds of places, away from a screen. And you don’t owe anyone a date, regardless of how they ask you out.

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